On Negotiation...

A term being thrown around the political arena a lot lately is the term "negotiate". The problem is that there isn't much actual negotiating going on. Rather, what we have been seeing is a whole lot of extortion and grandstanding. Republicans have shut down the government rather than negotiate. Obama (mistakenly, in my opinion) has said he is refusing to negotiate. And now our nation is stuck in the mud.

"Negotiating" with someone implies trying to reach agreement by mutual give-and-take. If you aren't offering anything of value to the other party, or if what you are "offering" is the lack of destruction of their or jointly-owned property, you are not negotiating. Indeed, the latter case is clearly extortion. Unfortunately, this is precisely what Republicans are doing today. Their "negotiations" have been nothing but constantly shifting their demands, while steadfastly refusing to offer anything in return. Repeal ACA? No? Ok, how about a delay. Or a repeal of some of the taxes? Or automatic spending cuts every time we refuse to sign a budget? And what are we offering in return that Democrats would want? Nothing, other than abiding by previously agreed-upon budgets and not defaulting on the debt!

Obama is infinitely better, but I think he has muffed the messaging. He should be very clear that he is (and has been) willing to negotiate and make major deals, under two conditions

1: That the government is running under the agreed-upon budgets with no immediate threat of shutdown, and that the debt ceiling is removed as an issue

2: That Republicans meet half way, and make concessions on taxes, military spending, and other Republican priorities

For the last five years, it has been Republicans who have refused to negotiate, balking at anything that even smells of a tax increase. Given our ultra-low tax rates (third lowest of the 34 OECD nations), there is no solution to our long-term problems that does not involve more revenue. Until Republicans realize this, and move beyond the childish extortion tactics they are currently engaged in, there will be no major progress politically. Republicans need to look back at the Ronald Reagan who actually existed and emulate him - a man who met Democrats in the middle, accepted a dozen tax increases, and made the nation a better place.

Red Up, Blue All The Way Down

This is an updated version of a post I originally wrote in March.

I've produced four different graphs below, all showing the same data but with slightly different adjustments. All data is calendar years, not fiscal years. Amazingly, the increase in our debt in Q3 of 2013 was less than $9 billion, in part due to the Treasury's efforts to avoid hitting the debt ceiling. The four graphs are:

1: Quarterly deficits vs GDP
2: Quarterly deficits, nominal
3: Quarterly deficits, inflation adjusted
4: Quarterly deficits, inflation adjusted per citizen

It's a lot of data, but the trend is rather obvious - vote Republican if you love exploding deficits, and Democratic if you love balanced budgets. This general trend holds true not only for the years on the graph, but all the way back to the post-war era. The last Republican president to oversee a reduction in the deficit was Eisenhower. The last Democratic president to oversee an indisputable rise in the deficit was FDR, and I think he deserves a pass due to WWII. Carter is the odd man out here. The deficit was largely unchanged during his term in office and whether it was a slight increase or a slight decrease depends on your measure. Also note that our projected deficit going forward is consistent with it approximately halving from its current level by the time Obama leaves office.

So when members of one particular party gripe about "fiscal responsibility", just show them these graphs, and remind them of how they have less than zero credibility on the matter.

Similar data can be found at AngryBearBlog here.

 

Chemistry salaries and the ACS Survey

So I woke up this morning to two emails from chemical industry-related reporters asking me my thoughts about the salaries of chemists. Why me? I really had no clue, until about an hour later, when I realized that a throw-away comment I made at the popular chemistry blog Chemjobber last week had turned into a full post by its anonymous author.

So what was my point? Basically I was mildly critiquing the annual salary survey of the American Chemical Society. ACS is a great organization, which I have been a member of since I was an undergrad, and I have filled out their survey every year I can remember. However, I have always felt it was biased a bit high for industrial chemists, for several reasons.

1: Chemists who choose to be members of ACS are not random. It is not uncommon for companies, especially larger corporate ones, to pay membership dues for their workers. This, of course, is more likely for better paid or higher ranking employees.

2: For chemists who don't work for such generous companies, those with higher level jobs, better connections to academia (which is the bread and butter of ACS), and higher pay are more likely to choose to pay their dues out-of-pocket

3: There is likely to be some non-random factors in the response rate as well. With only a quarter or so members responding, there is ample chance for bias to creep in. Perhaps better paid workers like to brag a bit, even if it is anonymous? Or exaggeration?

Overall, I have the feeling, based on my personal experience with several companies, that ACS is biased 5-10% high with respect to industrial pay as a result of these cumulative errors. As I mentioned over at Chemjobber, those interested in chemical industry pay may want to look at the data at salary.com, which is more HR-centric and in my opinion a little more accurate. Roughly,

Chemist I = Senior technicians
Chemist II = BS/BA
Chemist III = Master's
Chemist IV = PhD
Chemist V = Front-line manager, team leader, or senior individual contributors with strong track records

Of course, individual mileage varies a lot, and people might start one slot lower and can finish anywhere if they are good (I've seen former technicians rise all the way to management), but I think that looking at both the ACS data and the salary.com data is a prudent thing to do when trying to figure out if chemistry is the career for you, or if you are trying to benchmark your pay relative your peers. The two data sets are nicely complementary, with salary.com showing distributions, while ACS doing demographic breakdowns based on age, geography, etc, giving you more opportunities for understanding than either data set alone.

Update: I was quoted by Chemistry World on an article related to this topic.

Immigration, Foreign Family Members, and the Globally Mobile

There are a number of gaping holes in our immigration system. One is that their is no non-Kafkaesque solution for foreign-citizen family members of globally mobile American citizens. This is particularly ironic precisely because such mobile citizens are much more likely than average to have foreign family members in the first place.

When it comes to family members immigrating to the US, our system is permanent residency (a green card), or nothing. A would-be resident applies for a visa based on a family status such as marriage, and after receiving it generally has six months to arrive in the US and another ninety days to apply for a green card once he or she arrives. Assuming everything is in order, they get a green card a few months later, and everything is great - unless they ever want to live outside the US. In this case, USCIS throws a hissy.

If you want to live outside the US while holding a green card, you need to obtain a special travel document before you leave, and periodically come back to the US in a pair of closely-spaced trips or one extended trip in order to replace your travel permit if it is about to expire. USCIS also refuses to grant serial travel permits. While there is no fixed standard, spending more than half one's time outside the US as a permanent resident is likely impossible. If a permanent resident fails to maintain their travel permits, USCIS will strip their residency and green card upon entry to the US. This ends up creating tremendous headaches for the foreign family members of US citizens, forcing them to spend thousands of dollars in filing and legal fees, not to mention the cost and time of repeated trips back to the US from abroad at USCIS's whim.

Is there a solution to this costly, pointless issue? In fact, there are at least two, as exemplified by Canada and Japan.

The Canadian system simply allows its permanent residents to live abroad if they are living with their Canadian citizen family member, or if their Canadian employer moved them abroad. From the Canadian perspective, the maintenance of one's Canadian work or family ties is sufficient to protect one's residency, even if abroad for years at a time.

Japan is also very relaxed about its "permanent residents" living abroad. However, it has an additional feature - long-term family visas. In Japan, one does not jump straight to permanent residency. Instead, family members, like workers and students, start with 1-5 year visas that provide residency and work rights. These generally are indefinitely renewable unless there is a cause to deny them, and in many cases, Japanese foreign residents never bother to obtain their "permanent" residency and are content to remain in Japan on a series of family visas. If such people want to leave Japan for a few years, it is no big deal at all. Just leave. If your visa expires while abroad, apply for a new one before you come back. Or even after you come back, as unlike the US, you can apply for visas in Japan while in the country as a tourist. Given that Japan's visa applications require half the documentation, cost five times less, and are adjudicated in less than half the time than the US, it is perfectly possible to land as a tourist and get your visa after the fact.

It's a globally mobile modern world, yet our immigration policy is still based on archaic rules set in an area where coming to or departing from the US was a long, expensive one-in-a-lifetime event. It's time we moved our immigration policy out of the stone age and made it simple for our permanent residents to move in and out of the country.

South Korea vs Japan, FIGHT!

Having spent a few days in South Korea for the first time, after having lived years in Japan, I couldn't help but to compare the two while I was traipsing around Seoul. Here are my thoughts about the advantages and disadvantages of each

Advantage South Korea:

Beef > fish
Know how to bury power lines
Newer, more modern high rises
Incheon > Narita
Trains are not completely cluttered with ads
Food quantity/price
Cheaper booze
Can speak English better
More foreigners in general
Friendlier with said foreigners due to three items above
Economy is growing rather than stuck in the mud
Has food vending machines
Extremely high butterfly to flower ratio
Hostesses give more ppo-ppo and chu-chu
Korean hangul may well be the most rational written script on earth
Better TVs and video billboards
More street food stalls
Big, cheap hotel rooms
Overall cheaper in almost all respects
Less ossified politically
Better city hall
Not quite as crowded
No crazy old guys riding around in black trucks blaring right-wing racist propaganda

Advantage Japan:

No crazy next-door neighbor with nukes
Better temples
Better trains
Better mountains
Much more bike and pedestrian friendly
Much better urban underground
Better convenience stores
More and better vending machines for drinks
Fewer extraneous zeros on the currency
Food quality
Most of the boorish US troops are cooped up in a little island rather than in the capital
Kimono > hanbok
Better maintenance of traditional arts and crafts
Women remain hot longer
More than a billion foreign people can at least guess at the meaning of written Japanese
Fewer (or better hidden) homeless people
Better cars
Better service
Smells better
Sky Tree > N. Seoul Tower


Draws:

jgirls vs kgirls
jpop vs kpop
soju/shouchuu
presence of American military
weather

Welfare, Photo IDs, and Easy Money

How many times have you heard someone say that is permissible to require photo ID's for voting, because poor people also need photo ID's to apply for welfare? This meme has become conservative conventional wisdom, but is it true?

As far as I can tell, no. It is false. I got tired after having checked a dozen of our largest states, but Ohio, Virginia, and New York serve as typical examples of what I found. Generally, you need to prove you are poor, that you are a resident, and that you are a citizen (in some cases). A wide variety of documents are accepted, many if not most of which are not photo IDs. In the case of unemployment benefits, hardly any documentation was required and you could often do it online. Welfare benefits such as SNAP (food stamps) or Medicaid required relatively extensive documentation and an interview, but there is generally broad latitude for what counts and a waiver process that can bypass any obstacles.  Of course, having a photo ID is helpful and can be used to prove either residency (driver's license, state ID) or citizenship (passport), but they are clearly not necessary.

I did find that Republicans in some states such as Illinois are pushing for ID requirements, but haven't found one where they have passed. Other states, such as Massachusetts, appear to be turning SNAP cards into photo IDs, which is a perfectly reasonable idea, especially if these then count as voter ID. Also note that in every state I looked in, voter registration was connected to benefit applications. That's also good policy. But I could not find a single state where photo ID's were required to apply for or receive SNAP, Medicaid, or unemployment.

So here is the easy money part. The next time your crazy Republican uncle brings up the "you need photo ID for welfare" trope, bet him $50 that you don't in your state. Few things are more fun than deservedly separating a fool from his money.

.......................................

Update: Fair Elections Legal Network has some related information on when you do and do not need photo identification. Basically, you need a photo ID to get Sudafed, and alcohol if you are lucky enough to be young. For everything else, there is a work-around. Basically, many people are confusing "situations where you are asked for a photo ID" and "situations for which a photo ID is necessary". There are many of the former, but few of the latter. If it is important, you can be sure there is alternative solution in place for people without a photo ID.

Update II: I suggest you take a look at Canada's voter ID system. The accept any of the following:

1: A state-issued photo ID

2: Two non-photo forms of identification from a list of several dozen, including things like leases, hunting licenses, library cards, credit cards, etc. At least one must contain your address.

3: Any registered voter may vouch for one other person in their district. The vouched for person cannot subsequently vouch for anyone else.

This seems to be an eminently reasonable compromise to me.

Update III: After looking through the laws of several states, I doubt that lacking a photo ID can prevent you from obtaining alcohol if you are over 21. It is generally legal for someone else who has an ID to buy alcohol on your behalf and give it to you, if you are of age.

At What Price Kitten Videos?

I am not a civil libertarian, at least when it comes to government surveillance. The primary thing I have learned from the Edward Snowden affair is that the NSA is actually remarkably restrained and is actually snooping our data much less than I had previously assumed it was. Part of this is thanks to the Obama administration, which despite any flaws it might have in this matter, is decidedly better than the Bush administration had been.

In fact, with proper checks, balanced, and oversight, I would have no problem with domestic data being snooped, analyzed, and stored by the government in a widespread manner. It is not as if every last bit of our electronic communications is not already being snooped by numerous private corporations – an invasion of “privacy” that we are willing to trade for pennies-off discounts or a chance to see a new kitten video.  I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it was swept up by aggressive foreign governments as well.  To what end are we holding our own law enforcement agencies back?

Before you run off and start trying to quote Ben Franklin, let’s look at his actual quote

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”

Note that there are three qualifiers in that statement: “essential”, “little” and “temporary”. This quote is often abused and the qualifiers dropped, turning it into an absolutist statement that actually defies common sense. Without the qualifiers, the statement would logically imply that things like paying taxes to support a military, or speed limits, or airline or food safety regulations would be violations of Franklin’s maxim. This, of course, is absurd, and correspondingly we do in fact trade liberty for security all the time with little debate. The question is not whether we should ever trade liberty for security, but whether any particular trade is a good deal. Given that we are willing to sell our personal data for kitten videos, I find it pretty hard to buy the argument that we shouldn’t be willing to sell it for a substantial reduction in crime and terrorism.

Let’s not pretend that we can’t obtain security this way, either. It’s not hard to think of all sorts of real world examples of where ubiquitous data searching and storing would either prevent crimes, or afford their proper adjudication. For example, a book I recently read, People Who Eat Darkness, concerned a serial rapist in Tokyo, who was ultimately caught in 2001 in no small part due to cell phone tracking, which wasn’t possible for most of his spree that began in the 1980’s. His crime could not even be copied now due to improved surveillance and tracking. Or imagine if we had a recording of the phone call between Trayvon Martin and Rachel Jeantel. This recording would likely have either proven Zimmerman’s guilt, or clearly exonerated him. Instead, we are left in a state of a possibly-guilty man walking free but living in hiding, neither of which is optimal. Or simply imagine if the police could swiftly determine the identity of all nearby cars after a hit-and-run. There are countless similar examples.

I also fail to see the downsides to such a system of ubiquitous data analysis and collection. Yes, it is possible that an individual or small group within the NSA, FBI, CIA, etc could abuse the system for personal or partisan purposes, but is clear that there are systems in place to prevent this, and such behavior is indisputably illegal and would blowback a hundredfold onto any partisan group that tried it. Obviously, we need strong, transparent oversight from both the judicial branch and Congress, but I see little indication that these powers are being wielded irresponsibly and have a hard time even coming up with plausible scenarios where they could do much damage – certainly compared to the aforementioned serial rapist who raped hundreds of women and murdered two. Of course, there is the black helicopter argument: what happens if there is a total collapse of our democracy, and some evil dictator uses these powers for ill? To which I respond that such a hypothetical evil dictator will quickly obtain and implement such powers regardless of whether we do today or not. I don’t waste my time worrying about how to deal with WWIII or the zombie apocalypse and neither should you. The unknown unknowns of such a scenario dwarf any logic or reasoning we could apply to them today.

The big data genie is never going back into the bottle, and our data is and will be snooped by both public and private organizations. It is better to learn to harness this power, and install and monitor the proper oversight, than it is to tilt at windmills and shake our fists in vain. I, for one, welcome our new AI-XkeyScore-Googleplex-NSAFBICIA overlords.